


An Appointment With Destiny

by ConceptaDecency



Series: Language Lessons [4]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Cultural Differences, Federation Standard, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 19:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16625024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConceptaDecency/pseuds/ConceptaDecency
Summary: Garak and the doctor have a breakthrough during their language exchange.





	An Appointment With Destiny

**Author's Note:**

> Don't ask me how the Universal Translator works.

“Garak, I’m so sorry to keep you waiting! I couldn’t get away and I couldn’t message you. Commander Sisko was intensely displeased about...something, so I didn’t dare.” Realising he was about to reveal possibly a little too much to his former, or perhaps not-so-former, Obsidian Order friend, Doctor Bashir said no more, instead covering his lapse by collapsing his gangly self into the chair opposite the Cardassian. “Computer, set Universal Translator to Education Mode.” He made an apologetic face. “As it’s my fault our language exchange has been cut short, we can just practice Standard today. If you’d like.”

Garak had been smiling pleasantly throughout the doctor’s torrent of apologies. He sat back, at ease in his chair, holding a room-temperature and nearly-finished cup of red leaf tea in both hands.

“Whatever you wish, Doctor. But I assure you, I’m not at all offended that your appointment with Commander Sisko went on longer than expected.” 

“Eh? Appointment? No, it was a meeting, Garak,” said the doctor absently, craning his neck as he tried to attract the attention of one of the waiters. 

“Oh? Is that not the same thing?” 

“Not really. Erm, a meeting is something you have at work with your colleagues. An appointment is something you have with your doctor. Or your tailor,” he added, meeting Garak’s eyes and quirking his mouth up on one side. “Oh, there he is!”

The Ferengi waiter was successfully flagged down and fresh tea for two was ordered. 

“And what about a date?” Garak asked when the waiter had left them.

“I’m sorry?” The doctor blinked. 

“A date. Could I have a date with my doctor?”

“Err.” The panicked look fled from the young man’s face as he connected Garak’s question to their previous exchange. He laughed. “I suppose that depends on how you feel about your doctor.” 

“Oh, I’m quite fond of him,” Garak said. His tone was airy, but the intensity of his eyes, as it often did, put lie to the casualness of his voice. 

In turn, the doctor’s eyes widened. 

“Thank you. I’m quite fond of you, too.” The doctor considered his next words carefully. “Garak, are you asking me on a date?”

“How would I know, Doctor? You still haven’t explained what a date is.” All the force had left Garak’s person and he was again as calm and collected as before. He tilted his head to one side in expectation. 

“Ah. Fair enough.” The doctor swallowed. Unfortunately the waiter had not yet arrived with their order, as a cup to occupy his hands and a soothing drink to sip would probably have made this a little less awkward. Why, _why_ , had he jumped to the conclusion that Garak was asking him out on a date? And worse, put the assumption into words? “A date is more of a social appointment. You can have a date with anyone you like, not just your doctor. Or your tailor,” he trailed off.

Garak beamed. 

“How interesting. Then would you say we’re having a date now?”

“Well. By some definitions, yes.” Time to come clean. “But, erm, the word ‘date’ usually has...romantic connotations.”

The waiter arrived, finally, with a teapot and two cups, and the doctor applied himself to serving for both of them with industriousness, not glancing at Garak even once.

“Ah, then my initial impression was correct. Thank you, Doctor. I thought I’d got it wrong.”

The doctor looked up abruptly from the steaming cup he was pouring. “Pardon?”

“My initial impression that the word ‘date’ had romantic connotations.” 

“So, you _were_ asking me on a date?” 

“Doctor, mind what you’re doing!” The tea had overflowed the cup and breached the saucer, and a trickle was rapidly racing down the table toward the doctor’s lap. The doctor jumped up, but it was too late.

“My dear, are you all right? You didn’t burn yourself, I hope?” Garak was mopping up the rest of the spilt tea with napkins.

“No, no, I’m fine. No harm done,” said the doctor, and it seemed to be partly true. Only a wet blotch on one thigh, about the width of a hand, sullied his uniform. 

“That should dry quickly, but come with me to the shop on your way back to the infirmary and I’ll treat it so it doesn’t stain.” Garak folded the hot sodden napkins carefully, so that he didn’t squeeze any of the liquid out, and placed them to the side of the table. 

“Thank you, Garak, I will.” The mess now subdued and contained, the doctor slid back into his chair and passed Garak’s newly-filled cup over the table. 

“In answer to your question, Doctor, yes.” Garak accepted the cup by taking it in both hands from the doctor, his cool fingers lightly brushing the warmer human ones. “Thank you, my dear.”

“You're welcome. My question?” The doctor’s head was bent, now focused on tackling the problem of his own cup, filled precariously to the brim with steaming tea. Was a slurp the only way out of this situation? Was the tea cool enough for that? He looked up at Garak.

“Doctor, you _are_ absent-minded today. Was the meeting with Commander Sisko really that distracting?”

“No...” 

“Yes, I was asking you on a date. And I am again, now.”

“A date, Garak?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“A romantic date?” 

“Didn’t we already establish that ‘date’ has romantic connotations?” Garak’s placid expression was beginning to waver a little and there was more than a hint of amusement in his voice. “My dear, one of the reasons I wish to book a date with you is your intelligence, but if I’ve overestimated it, I may need to withdraw my request.”

“‘Go on’.” The doctor decided to abandon the overladen cup as a bad job, given the undignified method of tea extraction he had in mind. He straightened his body. 

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s ‘go on a date’, not ‘book a date’,” the doctor explained. “And, Garak, please don’t withdraw your request. I’d quite like to, um, grant it.” He looked down at his tea, then back at Garak, and then smiled. 

Garak allowed the appearance of genuine joy to flash across his features. 

“My dear, consider the request re-extended.”

“Then yes, I’d love to. Go on a date with you,” he clarified. “A romantic one.”

“How gratifying that you’ve finally understood my intentions, my dear. I was beginning to doubt my abilities in Standard.” Garak extended his hand across the table towards the doctor’s. “May I?” 

“Of course.” The doctor slid his hand over the table towards Garak’s and they entwined their fingers experimentally. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand straight away, Garak. It wasn’t your Standard. I just don’t usually expect you to be so direct.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Doctor.” Distractingly, Garak was now caressing the doctor’s thumb with his own. “I can be very direct when the situation calls for it.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” said the doctor, his skin tingling pleasantly under Garak’s touch. “You can be whatever you want when the situation calls for it, can’t you?” 

“Precisely, my dear. I’ve come to realise, through our language exchange, how very direct a language Federation Standard is. You weren’t responding to my traditional overtures of courtship, so I necessarily changed my approach.”

Doctor Bashir’s dexterous thumb was tracing the scales on Garak’s hand now. 

“Traditional overtures of Cardassian courtship, I guess you mean?”

“Of course, Doctor, what else?”

“What else indeed. I must have missed them. What are the traditional overtures of Cardassian courtship?” 

“Perhaps we can discuss those on our date.”

“If you like. I’d be glad to. Although I feel like we’re already on a date. This kind of thing,” the doctor squeezed Garak’s hand, “is not usually done by humans outside of romantic interactions.” 

“Would you like for us to stop?” Garak tugged his hand back teasingly, not releasing the doctor’s fingers, so that he pulled the human’s hand along with his own.

“Not at all,” grinned the doctor, gently resisting the pull. Garak allowed him to reposition their hands so that they were now palm to palm. “I quite like it.”

“As do I. But I’m given to understand that there is some ritual involved in a human ‘first date’.”

“Garak, I don’t think…ritual?”

“Yes, Doctor. I believe I, as the one who asked you, am supposed to suggest the location, for one thing. But Quark’s was your idea.” Garak gestured around and sniffed. “It’s also hardly what humans would consider romantic.”

“Ah, well, that’s true,” conceded the doctor. There was somehow always quite the sticky pong of spilt ale and unwashed patrons at Quark’s. “And I suppose that is the tradition. So where is our date going to be? Do you have somewhere in mind?”

“I do. Anywhere is better than Quark’s, but I propose the Klingon restaurant.”

“Are you serious?” He’d been trying to get Garak to come with him to the Klingon restaurant for ages, with no success, there being no persuading Garak when he was set against something. 

“Of course I’m serious.” Garak beetled his brow as if perplexed, though the doctor knew it was a game. They’d spoken many times about rhetorical questions in Standard. Garak claimed to find them quite charming, if unsophisticated. And he should know. Kardasi was a language of little other than rhetoric. “Why would I be flippant about such a thing? Klingon cuisine is said to be quite romantic.”

“Ah, of course. I’m sorry I doubted your sincerity.” Klingon cuisine was actually supposed to be more sensual than romantic. Some claimed that the feeling of _gagh_ sliding down one’s throat had aphrodisiacal qualities, though the doctor had never really found it to be so. Still, he was familiar enough with Cardassian culture to know that they were relatively prudish about sex by Federation standards. Or at least prudish about talking about it. Normally he might have pushed the issue, pointing out the difference between romantic and sensual in order to pique his friend into a very amusing state of vexation, but he was enjoying this soft, romantic Garak. It was a facet he hadn’t suspected could exist, but the man never ceased to surprise him. “When shall I meet you at the restaurant?”

“Oh, no, my dear. I believe another ritual of human dating is that I should pick you up from your residence. I do hope you won’t allow me to get away with non-observance of your courtship rules just because I’m Cardassian.”

***

“Garak, it’s a good thing this wasn’t our first date,” gasped the doctor. His back was pressed against the wall of the larger of Garak’s two dressing rooms. His uniform jumpsuit was draped over the stool. A stain-removing device of Cardassian design was perched carefully atop it, and its amorous Cardassian owner, having abandoned all pretence, was applying himself to the removal of the doctor’s turtleneck undershirt. 

“Oh? What do you mean by that, my dear?” Perhaps _all_ pretence hadn’t been abandoned. It was Garak, after all. 

“Traditionally one isn’t supposed participate in activities like this on a first date.”

“Activities like what, Doctor?” Under the fabric, Garak’s cool hands crept up the doctor’s chest. “If you’d put your arms up I could remove this more easily.”

The doctor raised his arms obediently, and Garak tugged the garment off with a single jerk, somehow not even turning it inside out and scarcely mussing the doctor’s hair in the process. 

“Well, activities involving removal of clothing.”

“It’s a good thing this is an appointment, then. It’s quite usual to remove clothes at a tailor’s appointment. At least, it is on Cardassia.” Garak already had the undershirt shaken out, folded neatly, and piled on the stool.

“I knew you’d be the type to fold clothes.”

“Really, my dear. A fine tailor I’d be if I allowed my clients’ garments to be strewn across the shop.” Garak’s index finger was expertly exploring the band of the doctor’s briefs. 

“And you are a very good tailor.” The doctor gasped as Garak’s finger delved deeper and brushed his skin. 

“On Cardassia, a good tailor is extremely attentive to all of his clients.” A little pressure on the band pulled it away from the front of the doctor’s hip, while at the same time digging it into the top of his buttock. It began to inch down.

“And on Cardassia, could a client also be extremely attentive to his tailor?” 

“I suppose that depends on how you feel about your tailor.”

**Author's Note:**

> This one is a bit silly, but it was a sweet escape to write and I had fun doing it, so I hope others feel the same way! 
> 
> Please let me know. I really do love engaging with readers via comments.


End file.
